The House Always Wins (Unless You Cheat)
by AMKelley
Summary: What if the Lone Wanderer survived and moved to the Mojave to become a Courier for the Mojave Express? An introspection. A character study. (The Lone Wanderer could be read as a male or a female).


By all rights you should be dead, but you're not. In fact, you're far from it.

The first time death came knocking should have been the only visit from him, and you should have been dead with that amount of radiation, but you cheated. Of course you didn't mean to cheat, but you're not exactly taking it back either. You're not complaining about the foul up in death's design. You're glad to still be alive even if it means you won't be who you were. Even if it means you look like this.

You looked pretty dead lying on the ground like that, and felt pretty dead, with everyone peering in at you through the glass and they believed it for weeks. Until one day when you woke up and everything felt new like you were being born again. And you hear your mother's voice and you see your father's bright smile as he looks at you for the first time. There's a moment of clarity, then it's gone.

Your body is stiff and movement is awkward for you like you're just discovering it and you feel like a child that's been abandoned on a doorstep. Without a father and without a mother. Left with nothing but yourself. What's left of it at least. And you don't realize just how long it's been since you've been "asleep" and when your head rolls towards the glass door, you see no one. Sarah is no longer standing their and neither is Charon or Fawkes or Jericho. No one is watching you wake up and you wonder:

How long have I been dead? Am I even still alive?

Those first few steps were always the hardest and when you finally get to the door you see yourself for the first time in God knows how long. At first you think Charon is standing there as if he's been waiting for you to wake up all this time, but it's not. It's you. Only you as you stare back at your reflection with confused frustration. You want to believe that this is a nightmare and that you'll wake up, but you don't.

For a moment you don't know what to think and then you cry as you realize what you are, what you've become. The tears don't burn your face as you think they would and your hand comes up to cup a cheek, seeking it out cautiously as if to test it. Your fingertips touch what's left of your face and withdraw quickly, expecting it to hurt you. When your brain registers that it doesn't sting, you place your palm flat against your face and it feels as normal as before.

You curse to whatever God or higher force is responsible for this "miracle", wishing that they would've let you die instead showing you mercy. If this even was mercy. Through the fogginess of tears you notice that you can no longer make out the color of your eyes and you let out a feral scream because it is the only thing you feel like doing right now as you pound your fists against the glass door.

The second time death comes to collect his due it's in the form of a man in a checkered blazer and if this man didn't have a gun to your head you'd be calling him a clown and laughing. But this is not funny. At all. This isn't like the first time because back in the lab at Jefferson Memorial you had a choice, but as you stare up into the barrel of a gun, on your knees and hands bound in the cemetery of Goodsprings, you don't.

You had this idea of running away from the Capital Wasteland only to find yourself in the Mojave a few months later with a job as a Courier for the Mojave Express. You liked the Mojave a little more than DC because Ghouls seemed to be more accepted here. They even had Ghouls in the NCR which surprised you. So landing a job as a Courier wasn't as hard as you previously thought. If there was one thing to complain about in the Mojave, it would be the absence of Three Dog's witty disc-jockey banter.

At first you liked it because of all the places you got to see and people you met along the way. And even though it was dangerous most of the time, with the Fiends, Powder Gangers, and various creatures scattered along I-15 and 95, it was still enjoyable. But the one job that was too good to pass up changed all of that. You didn't need the money, per se, but having extra caps always made you more at ease. So you accepted the job with little to no questions.

If you would've known it would come to this, you would've refused like the Courier who had originally been assigned this job. Although you had prayed for a quick death months ago you were suddenly getting cold feet and you decided that you didn't want to die after all. But it was too late when the man before you cocked his gun and raised it towards you. You closed your eyes, for what you thought was the last time, and accepted your fate.

Again, you looked pretty dead as you were thrown into a shallow grave and buried, but your heart kept beating despite being shot point blank in the head. Buried in an unmarked grave with no name craved into the headstone to identify you. You were left for dead and you fell "asleep" again for a short period until it was time for you to wake up once more.

When you wake up this time you're in a bed and even though your head is throbbing, your aching back is thankful for the cushion of the mattress. You rise up from the bed, leaving your body's impression behind, to see an older man watching you intently. Of course you try to stand up to run away and stumble around, disillusioned, but he grabs gently onto your arm and beckons you to sit down. You ask him what happened and he tells you everything he knows.

The man informs you that he patched you up to the best of his abilities and he even gives you clothes and medical supplies. As you put on the Vault 21 suit a shiver runs down your spine and as you leave the kind man's house he gives you a Pip-Boy 3000, claiming to have no use for it anymore. You realize then that your own Pip-Boy had been discarded just a few months back, before you settled in Primm. Even though you're reluctant at first, you take it without any more words.

You should be dead and with that amount of brain trauma you shouldn't remember anything, but you're not dead and you remember everything. You know who you are, your name, and you know what you must do now. You know what's at stake and that your life hangs in the balance of things but that doesn't matter. Revenge is what matters. Getting even with the man who attempted to destroy everything you had left. The hands have been dealt and you have nothing left to wager. Nothing to lose.

Because you're already dead inside.


End file.
